August 31, 2026
THE DAILY McLUHAN DIALOGUES™ • McDialogues™
Understanding the Grammars of Electric Culture and Propaganda Science™
An Exploration of Technology Ecology as an Anchor in a Sea of Change™ and Tactical Training in Counter-Propaganda Science™
by Nelson S. Thall
Former Director/Chief Archivist, Marshall McLuhan Center On Global Communications, Ross, Ca. and McLuhan Media Scientist, Former President/Director, Marshall McLuhan Centre On Global Communications, Toronto, Canada.
THE SECOND DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Advertisers Are Developing Ways to Influence AI’s Answers That Influence What You Buy
A Student of Technology asks:
Mr. Thall, you have completed a book called Technotrap and handed it over to your literary agent. It examines what happens when technologies created to extend our powers begin diminishing the very faculties they extend. Time has begun placing sponsored information in special versions of its pages designed for Artificial Intelligence systems to read. The hope is that an AI may encounter that material and later use it when answering a person’s question. I understand an advertisement trying to catch my eye or ear. But what happens when the advertisement reaches the machine before it ever reaches me? Is that another Technotrap?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
Arthur Miller gave the industrial age its great tragic salesman, a man whose livelihood depended upon being seen, heard, liked and believed. Professor McLuhan showed in The Mechanical Bride how advertising learned to seize those human senses and turn attention into desire. But the salesman may no longer have to enter your senses first. Sponsored information can now enter the information environment of the Artificial Intelligence that may later answer you. The salesman does not have to get past the servant to reach the master. He can whisper to the servant before the master even enters the room.
Yes, there is the Technotrap. We employ Artificial Intelligence to search an overwhelming world, sort it and bring back what appears useful. But the advertiser has now discovered the extension itself and is learning how to influence what it brings back. The advertisement may never appear before your eyes as an advertisement. It can enter the environment from which your answer is assembled. The more efficiently the machine chooses what deserves our attention, the less attention we exercise in learning how to choose. That is the salesman’s second death. Selling has not disappeared. The salesman has disappeared from the human encounter. And the consumer is no longer merely deciding whether to believe an advertisement. He may be receiving an answer in which the advertisement has already helped decide what he gets to see.
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Sources: Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (1949); Digiday, “Time has started serving ads to AI agents,” July 30, 2026; Digiday, “Media Briefing: Ads for AI agents have a measurement problem,” August 20, 2026; Digiday, “The IAB is developing a framework to tackle AI advertising measurement,” August 24, 2026.
All intellectual property contained herein was conceived, originated and authored exclusively by Nelson S. Thall. Artificial intelligence, aka a pseudo-conscious machine (PCM), was not employed. We hired a stenographer. All rights of authorship and ownership vest entirely and exclusively with Nelson S. Thall.
© 2026 Nelson S. Thall. All Rights Reserved.
I can be reached at: nelson@themediumisthemessage.com